I was just trying to research online whether Oregon's vote by mail system has been a success. My anecdotal impression is that it has raised participation without any documented fraud or abuse. Am I missing something?

What I have found is that voter participation varies alot from election to election, so looking at raw participation in successive elections isn't helpful. My current theory about whether vote-by-mail increases participation is to compare Oregon's relative ranking in voter participation in Presidential elections since vote-by-mail started in 2000 with its ranking in earlier elections. I haven't done that yet, but even so, it will only give us 2 vote-by-mail data points.

As for fraud & abuse, are the Black Helicopter people right about that one??

The information about participation will be interesting. As for fraud and abuse, I think two observations are appropriate: first, the kinds of fraud and abuse are different from those that occur in a traditional election process; and second, it would be pretty hard -- maybe impossible -- to detect or prevent at least some vote-by-mail fraud. For several elections in a row, Multnomah County sent me two ballots, which I consider attempted entrapment.

I'd think there are much better ways to commit vote-by-mail election fraud that to fill-out two ballots in the same name in the same county. Didn't one of those betters ways get made more difficult by creation of a state-wide registered voted database, or was that just a dream I had?

Voter fraud is mostly a myth that the Republicans trot out whenever they lose an election, this just can't seem to understand that people don't agree with them. They spent a ton of money after 2004 and never found any.

The most prevelent kinds of "fraud" invlove good old fashioned corruption by local officials (shortages of machines in black neighborhoods in Ohio leading to long lines in 2004 suppressing turnout, calling people in neighborhoods where the other guy has strong support with misinformation, ballet boxes from certain precints being "lost" and so on) No study has shown that vote by mail is any more succeptable to fraud that standard voting.

Voter fraud is mostly a myth that the Republicans trot out whenever they lose an election, this just can't seem to understand that people don't agree with them. They spent a ton of money after 2004 and never found any.

Huh? In the last two presidential elections it was not the Republicans crying fraud. It was everyone who voted for someone other than GW. And they never found any either.

Jon,

I mean individual fraud, like the Reps argued in WA to try and overturn the last Governor's race, the issued challeneges like that in lots of lower level races and never found any fraud.

What people argued (correctly as the study by a consortium of News papers showed) in 2000 was that a hand recount of Florida ballots would have given the state to Gore.

As I said in my post the issue in 2004 was deliberately limiting the number of voting machines in Black neigborhoods in Ohio which may have suppressed enoug votes that would have swung the State to Kerry.

Again, party led fraud not individual voters.

PdxMark: Go here: http://earlyvoting.net for lots of reports on Oregon.

The problem with what you suggest is it assumes everything else about Oregon remained the same, relative to the nation, before and after 2000, and the only change was voting by mail.

BTW, there is no evidence of dead people voting under VBM, nor really of any measurable fraud in the system.

This doesn't mean VBM is the be all and end all to election reform, but fraud has not, up to now, been a concern in Oregon, and I see no reason to think it would be so in Colorado.

I liked vote by mail when I lived in PDX. I now live in Colorado and the last election was an absolute disaster. People gave up on voting because of long lines and malfunctioning machines. No one should give up their vote because of having to wait hours in line or faulty equipment. I always get an absentee ballot just so I know my ballot at least goes in right(providing the scanner is working!) VBM may get a lot of support here.

This issue is why it's absolutely critical for Democrats to win the 2008 Oregon Secretary of State race. If they don't a lot of people are going to jail.

"but fraud has not, up to now, been a concern in Oregon"

How do we know? Has anyone ever investigated it? I mean we register voters when they get a drivers license and we cant even ask if they are citizens or not.

I was voting by mail long before most folks as I didnt like lining up and trying to relax inside the booth while my children asked me "are you done?". So I have had absentee ballots mailed to me for decades..... works for me-should work for most folks....it's much easier to sit and think inside your own home.

Steve,

Yes, people have investigated it.